Patty and Azalea eBook

The small settlement of Arden was largely composed
of fine estates and attractive homes. This one
which they had taken was broad and extensive, with
hundreds of acres in lawns, gardens and woodland.
It was called Wistaria Porch, because of an old wistaria
vine which had achieved astounding dimensions and
whose blooms in the spring and foliage later were
the admiration of the whole countryside.

The house itself was modern and of the best Colonial
design. Indeed, it was copied in nearly every
detail from the finest type of Colonial mansion.
Though really too large for such a small family, both
Patty and Bill liked spacious rooms and lots of them,
so they decided to take it, and shut off such parts
as they didn’t need. But no rooms were shut
off, and they revelled in a great library beside their
living-room and drawing-room. They had a cosy
breakfast room beside the big dining-room and there
were a music room and a billiard room and a den and
great hall with a spreading staircase; and the second
story was a maze of bedrooms, guest rooms and bathrooms.

It took Patty some days even to learn her way round,
and she loved every room, hall and passage. There
were fascinating windows, great wide and deep ones,
and little oriels and dormers. There were unexpected
turns and nooks, and there was,—­which brought
joy to Patty’s heart,—­plenty of closet
space.

The whole place was of noble proportions and magnificent
size, but Patty’s home-making talents brought
cosiness to the rooms they themselves used and stateliness
and beauty to the more formal apartments.

“We must look ahead,” she told Billee,
“for I expect to spend my whole life here.
I don’t want to fix a place up just as I like
it, and then scoot off and leave it and live somewhere
else. And when our daughter begins to have beaux
and entertain house parties, we’ll need all the
room there is.”

“You have what Mr. Lucas calls a ‘leaping
mind,’” Bill remarked. “But
I’m ready to confess I like room enough to swing
a cat in,—­even if I’ve no intention
of swinging poor puss.”

And so they set blithely to work to furnish their
ancestral halls, as Patty called them, claiming that
an ancestral hall had to have a beginning some time,
and she was beginning hers now.

Such fun as it was selecting rugs and hangings, furniture
and ornaments, books and pictures.

Lots of things they had bought abroad, for Captain
Bill had been fortunate in his affairs and had had
some leisure time in France and England after the
war was over to collect some art treasures.

Also, they didn’t try or want to complete the
whole house at once. Part of the fun would be
in adding bits later on, and if there were no place
to put them, there would be no fun in buying things.

Patty was a wise and careful buyer. Only worth-while
things were selected, not a miscellaneous collection
of trumpery junk. So the result to date was charming
furniture and appointments, but space for more when
desired.